08/04/2003  Surface Technology Systems, a respected supplier of deep-etching tools to MEMS researchers, is now ready to serve the market for full-scale MEMS production. It just hopes the market is ready. STS's tools are popular among academic and industrial MEMS research labs because they can make silicon structures that are much taller than they are wide.

07/18/2003  As tiny microphones built with small tech are getting ready to leap into mobile phones, hearing aids, personal digital assistants and MP3 players, there’s already some competition brewing. Akustica Inc. and Knowles Acoustics Inc., with Denmark’s SonionMEMS as a dark horse, are vying for market leadership in MEMS-made mikes.

07/16/2003  FEI Co. has acquired a company and products to boost its efforts in microelectronics, according to a news release.

07/15/2003  July 15, 2003 – HandyLab Inc. has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program to develop a highly sensitive, low-cost microfluidic device for health care, homeland security and agriculture applications, according to a news release.

07/08/2003  Call it a dielectric sandwich. That’s one approach behind Raytheon Co.’s attempt to commercialize radio frequency MEMS components: Etch a circuit onto a silicon wafer, slap on a layer of dielectric material, then put a MEMS switch on top of that. Voila – an integrated RF MEMS device.

06/27/2003  Omron Corp. will begin selling a MEMS-based gas flow sensor for medical, industrial and consumer applications, according to a news release.

06/25/2003  A microfluidic device can function as a "liver-on-a-chip." Forests of nano-pillars can unravel strands of DNA. These small tech-enabled leaps in life science involve increasingly complex interactions, and the result is new data for scientists working on curing diseases. In fact, so much data that humans alone cannot possibly make sense of it all. Muscling such large and complex raw results into useful knowledge is the goal of bioinformatics.

06/23/2003  Cell phones. Everybody’s got them. No one thinks much about what’s inside. Discera wants you to, especially if you’re a mobile phone manufacturer. The company has developed a tiny mechanical device that vibrates at predetermined frequencies. “The first challenge is to go after a market we know is out there,” says Discera's CEO.

06/23/2003  Infineon Technologies AG, a Munich, Germany, semiconductor firm, is expected to announce today that the major obstacle in its friendly acquisition of Norway’s SensoNor ASA has been overcome.

06/11/2003  Integrated Sensing Systems Inc. (ISSYS) has launched a new business for its nanomaterial designed to boost the performance of MEMS and other devices.

06/05/2003  Remember OMM, the now-bankrupt company with great MEMS technology but not enough customers? One lesson learned from the networking crash is that cheaper products are the most cheerful sellers in this miserable market. Nonetheless, engineers at Hitachi are convinced that their technology can go where other higher-priced, all-optical switches haven’t: into optical networks.

05/30/2003 

05/25/2003  When 32 gentlemen and one lady start their engines Sunday, tiny devices will feed a stream of performance information to the race teams

05/23/2003  OnStream Holding, which makes wireless MEMS switches, has declared bankruptcy for the second time since it was spun off from Royal Philips Electronics in 1998. OnStream's management is looking at ways to restart its MEMS projects, and there are a few interested investors.

05/22/2003 

05/22/2003  Neonode Corp. of Sweden will use the SiSonic silicon micromachined microphone from Emkay Innovative Products of Itasca, Ill., in its Neonode N1 portable multifunction device. The N1 combines a cellular phone with an MP3 music player, a digital camera, a personal organizer and a portable game machine.

05/20/2003 

05/16/2003  Improved microfluidic channels are playing a key role in the next generation of biomedical applications. New advances in materials have brought forth much better and tinier microchannels, closing the loop between in vitro (test tube) diagnostics and in vivo (inside the body) therapies for medical problems using microfluidic drug-delivery systems. The optimism is not without some impressive market projections, though some are more bullish than others.

05/09/2003 

05/07/2003  The war in Iraq caught the U.S. military in the very early stages of the small tech revolution. Only a few MEMS systems were used inside the weapons that overthrew Saddam Hussein. But it's likely they will play a bigger role in any future war as MEMS-based military hardware move into advanced stages of development.
Tomorrow: Companies combat unseen bio/chem enemies
Friday: Military eager to end 'false positives' plague